The raw materials used in the rubber industry have always been blocky rubber for a long time, the blocky rubber not only brings inconvenience to carrying and batching, but also needs to be cut into small blocks to be weighed, and meanwhile, during mixing, great power will be consumed in order to comminute and mix the blocky rubber, and therefore, heavy-duty rubber mixing equipment is needed, not only is the power consumed greatly, but also the carbon black is not easy to disperse, rubber mixing takes more times and longer period. Besides, latex produced by the rubber tree is liquid, in order to prepare blocky rubber, latex should be solidified and dried. The procedure is very burdensome, the period is long, moreover, lots of manpower and material resources are consumed, and thus a lot of energy sources are wasted.
Aiming at various disadvantages during mixing of blocky rubber, wet mixing technology is developed. The wet mixing technology is a method to produce rubber compound by preparing fillers such as pre-processed carbon black and silica into aqueous dispersion, sufficiently mixing with rubber latex in a liquid state, and then performing processes such as coagulation, dewatering, and drying. Totally different from conventional multi-stage dry mixing of dry rubber and compounding ingredients such as carbon black and silica in an internal mixer, the wet mixing technology has the maximum advantages of good dispersion of fillers and good physical mechanical properties of vulcanized rubber, so that floating pollution of powder fillers can be effectively avoided, which is environmentally friendly; the mixing effect with other compounding materials is good, processing is very convenient, the mixing energy consumption and cost of the rubber can be remarkably reduced, facilitating to realize continuous mixing process.
Method and apparatus for preparing latex coagulum composites are disclosed in a Chinese patent application with application No. 201080052075.4, comprising a coagulum reactor having a mixing portion and a generally tubular diffuser portion extending with progressively increasing cross-sectional area from an entry end to an open discharge end. The apparatus is further characterized by a delivery tube terminating in an injection orifice adapted and constructed to deliver a fluid to the diffuser portion at a portal disposed between the entry end and the open discharge end. The application of the apparatus in preparation of latex composites mainly utilizes change in diameter of the conduit generates a mixing effect.
A continuous manufacturing method of rubber masterbatch is disclosed in a Chinese patent application with application No. 201310037190. X, the specific technical solutions are that: coagulator is a tubular coagulator having one or two or more inlets. When a mixture of rubber/filler/additive/solvent after refined dispersion is injected into the coagulator under the conditions of high speed and high turbulence, as the speed is very high, according to the principle of fluid mechanics and fluid mechanics of turbulence, the internal pressure of the mixture gets down sharply. Under the effect of high shear, the mixture will form tiny droplets. The rubber mixing utilizes the shape of the apparatus, and the liquid forms high speed and high turbulence within the apparatus for mixing.
The above two mixing effects are not ideal. No effective solution has been provided at present aiming at the problems in the related art.